Watch Me
by kabensi
Summary: They're nineteen. One's a slayer. One's a watcher. They're both kind of a pain in the ass. CONTAINS FEMSLASH between Dawn Summers and Charlotte Johannsen This is a BTVS slash Babysitters Club crossover and a derivative of my previous BSC fic.
1. Chapter 1

The guy on the left was cheating. Not just counting cards, but cheating. And not hiding it very well. That's the worst. When they think you're so stupid or blind that they can just mark cards right in front of you. Asshats.

I glanced around for Howie, the Pit Boss, but he was busy making nice with some high roller (well, as high a roller as get in this hole in the wall). I looked back at my table. Besides Cheater McCheaterson, there were three other players: Sloppy Drunk, Will and Grace (Will was playing while Grace just watched), and Little Old Lady. Old Lady was up by about a hundred. Not bad, considering this was a two dollar table. Even better, since Cheater was only up fifty bucks.

Howie finally looked my way. I tilted my head toward Cheater. Howie nodded and radioed security.

Little Old Lady collected her winnings and wandered off toward the nickel slots. I dealt the next hand. Cheater stood on soft thirteen while I was showing a four. No wonder he needed to cheat. Will and Grace stopped bantering just long enough to tell me they wanted a card. Sloppy hit on nineteen. The bastard drew himself a two. I flipped my card. Queen. One more. An eight. Bust. I passed Cheater his chips.

"Shoulda doubled down." I figured I'd be nice and give him some decent advice since he was about to get thrown out into the street.

"Huh?"

"You should have doubled down," I over enunciated, sliding Will his winnings. "I had four, you had soft thirteen. Hi/Lo card count says there's a heckuva lot of high cards in the remaining half of the shoe."

"Oh."

Nice. He was a one-word answer kind of guy. I wondered which word he'd choose when his ass hit the pavement.

-

"Give me twenty bucks."

"No way, I won this!"

"With my money."

"You're not even supposed to be on the floor."

"Yeah, that's great, Andrew, advertise that one."

"No one heard. Now stop bugging me, Summers."

"At least give me the room key so I can lock you out."

"Temper, temper. Just be cool and … crap, here comes security."

"Great. This is great."

"Look casual. Or go to the bathroom."

"How will that help?"

"No, like, go… over there. So they don't catch you."

"Oh. Right."

-

The thing I hated most about smoking was that I liked it. "Cigarettes, bad" was the anthem continually preached to my generation, particularly by my mother, the doctor. I was well aware that I was a pawn of the tobacco companies. But it didn't matter. I liked it. More so, I liked the camaraderie between smokers, the conversations that began with "Gotta light?" and "Can I bum one of those?"

Though, sometimes, it was a solo activity. Like now. The walk home was always a deep personal moment between myself and my pal Mr. Lucky Strike. Or, more recently, Mr. Lucky Strike Light.

On this particular night, as I flicked the cigarette, something caught my eye. The deduction of the average person would simply chalk it up to flying ash, but I wasn't one of those people. It was almost as if someone was watching me. It wasn't the first time it had happened. Or the second. Or even the third, for that matter. I'd always been overly perceptive of the slightest things and once I'd hit the height of awkward adolescence at fifteen, it had skyrocketed. My physical abilities perked up around that time, too. "Perked up" might be an understatement. Especially if you ask the guy in the coma. Not that I want him to wake up. He was a grabby rapist asshole who deserved every cracked rib and skull fracture he got bouncing down those stairs.

A glance over my shoulder assured me there was nothing there. Or if there had been, it was gone.

-

"You really need to learn to shut up."

"Hey, now, I'm the senior officer here, Missy."

"Are not."

"Am too! I've officially been training under Mr. Giles longer! Just because you two have a longstanding personal relationship does not give you the right to undermine me."

"It just gives me the right to call him up and tell him you're an asshead. And that you used the company credit card for your WarCraft subscription."

"It is a strategic tool!"

"You're a tool. Do we even know where we are?"

"It's the next street, I think."

"Better be. My feet are killing me."

"Those shoes look great, though."

"You think?"

"Totally flattering to the calves."

"Thanks-- Hey! I'm still mad at you."

-

This was the routine. For two years I'd taken this walk from the Shoreside Casino down the row of cheap motels to the Holiday Inn Express, which was just a step enough above the preceding lodging establishments to erase the worry of finding a dead whores in the mattresses from the minds of any lodgers. It was a far cry from the cozy girl ridden dorms of Westlake Academy, but when you slam a two hundred pound janitor through a wall and down three flights, even by semi-accident, there are a lot of questions you don't want to stick around and answer.

So, there I was, taking my nightly stroll from point A to point B, when things took a sudden turn toward the atypical.

A guy had been following me. That alone wasn't unusual. In fact, it was disturbingly standard. A pretty, young girl out walking alone was a magnet for vulgar, slobbering drunks. Sometimes they just hung back, watching, not making any physical advances, just giving live renditions of obscene phone calls. Other times they'd try to grab me, cop a feel. And then get kicked square in the crotch. But this guy wasn't cat calling. He wasn't eyeing me like a death row inmate. His gaze held a hunger… a thirst for something. It made my skin crawl. For a block or so, he'd stayed back a good thirty feet, but now he was closing in. I picked up the pace, nervously fingering my cigarette. The urge to check behind me, no matter how much the cliché dictated that it would be my undoing, won out. One casual glimpse over the shoulder was all I needed. I took it.

And ran smack into Will and Grace.

"Oof! Sorry!" Grace was tallish, long shiny hair, great legs.

Will, on the other hand, was on the shorter side, his curly blonde hair somewhat askew. "We didn't mean to… hey, you're that blackjack dealer. Look, I didn't know she wasn't twenty-one."

I took a drag. "I'm not tailing you."

He straightened up. "Of course. That thing I said before… was a joke."

"You guys have a swell night." I moved past them to cut through the parking lot of the Premium Suites Motel, which didn't offer suites, nor was it premium. Just another one of life's wacky little ironies.

Like the one where I finally breathed a sigh of relief before finding myself face to face with Creepo Follower Guy.

"Nice night for a walk," he hissed.

Who the hell hisses when they talk other than villains in bad horror movies? "Yeah. Sure." I tried to push past him, but he latched his hand to my arm. "Look, pal, I'm not really in the mood for bullshit right now."

"That's good. I'm not, either." His eyes grew wide as his face changed into… something that looked like a bad Botox experiment. With massive teeth.

I gave him a solid shove, pushing him back at few feet. It seemed to surprise him.

What surprised me was Will and Grace running up on us like they were ready to tussle in a three piece suit and heels.

"Thirsty?" Will pulled a flask from his pocket and flung the contents all over the Creep.

A smell immediately permeated the air. Scotch. I wasn't sure what that was supposed to accomplish.

"Andrew!" Grace grabbed the flask out of Will's—er, Andrew's hand.

"I forgot! It was a long flight."

"So where'd you put the Holy Water?"

"You know, Dawn, I'm not the only one with a job here. If you weren't so engrossed in your Sumarian demon journals, maybe you'd think about bringing something."

Working in Atlantic City, I hear plenty of outrageous stuff, but this was just weird. I wanted to ask if they were crazy religious, but there was a hand grabbing at my shoulder. Jesus Christ, this guy wasn't gonna give up.

"Hey! Lay off, asshole!" I chucked my lit cigarette at him, not considering the combustible nature of 80 proof liquor.

He went up in flames, screaming, reaching for me.

Grace AKA Dawn was by my side in a second, pulling me away from the burning man. Before I had a chance to consider whether I should run or try to kick some ass, the guy exploded into a pile of dust.

-

Back at Westlake (see: all girls academies designed to securely reassure one's sexuality), I quickly learned that, while people pretend they're being themselves and constantly offer reasons why you should trust them because they are, in fact, giving you an honest glimpse at who they are; most of the time they're bullshitting. The hot girl drowning her lips in gloss is certainly a bitch just like her novelty baby-tee might announce, but she's definitely not as stupid as she wants everyone to believe. Any guy with a sweet face offering study help at the library will almost always try to cop a feel once you get to the private reading rooms. And that babysitter who said you'd always be friends and that she'd always listen to any problem you had was probably telling what she thought was the truth, but in the end, she'll end up busy with her own big bad life in the big bad city and eventually never return any phone call or e-mail you might drop her way.

That's humans for you.

Apparently, though, demons are different. That guy with the pointy teeth and the screwy face who, for lack of a better comparison, looked like a vampire? Was a vampire.

Yeah, it sounded weird to me, at first, too. And that was the short version.

"… and thus began the global mobilization of the Slayers of the Vampyres."

Dawn took yet another sip of her orange soda. She hadn't said a word since Andrew began his lengthy lecture on the Slayers of the Vam-py-res. Yeah, I didn't know it was a three-syllable word, either.

Andrew slid his metal pointer along the dry erase board. It was full of hand-drawn demons, sloppy charts of paranormal activities, and a picture of a blonde girl holding what I first mistook for something of a sexual nature, but it turned out it was just a wooden stake. You know, for the Vampyres.

With a clink, the soda can rested on the cheap formica counter top of my crappy motel room. I wasn't quite sure what to make of Dawn.

Actually, I wasn't able to stop looking at her legs and her shiny hair (oh, fine, and all the stuff in between) to really evaluate what she was putting out. Er, I mean, putting out there. As in, out there for people to see.

"And… so… I think that's all I have for you at the moment, Ms. Johannsen." He dug through his leather satchel, sorting through books and file folders. A copy of Lost in Translation slipped out of the bag and landed on the floor. "Oops. That's just… for my leisure time."

Dawn picked up the DVD and shoved it into his hand. "He's a lame-o loser who doesn't listen and thought we were coming to get Scarlett Johannsen."

"Hey! I am not lame-o! And it wouldn't be our first celebrity slayer." Andrew held the movie to his chest. "Dakota Fanning finds time to fight evil and still dazzle us with her on-screen talents."

"You're so giving away the kind of information that is top secret."

"Oh, please. The fact that her slayer genes were decelerating her aging process would have given her up, eventually."

There was the ping of a Sunkist can against forehead and Andrew was suddenly quiet. Kind of.

"Ow… I'm going back to the car."

"It's parked at the casino."

"Then I'm going to the cab that's taking me to the car." He grabbed his briefcase and huffed out the door.

"Sorry, he's… challenged."

With all the ruckus, I hadn't even realized I was still wearing my cheesy dealer's getup and suddenly felt very self conscious.

I tugged at my bowtie. "Yeah, well… you should see the weirdos I work with."

"His office has a life-sized Han Solo in carbonite. Though, I might have just outed myself as a geek for knowing that it's carbonite."

She was funny. Which made the self conscious aspect even worse. Hot girls are one thing. Hot girls with wit? Something else, entirely.

"It's okay. We all know it's carbonite." The bowtie landed on the counter. I felt better now that I looked a little less like Charlie Chaplin. "So, what's your take on this Slayer thing? Are you one, too?"

"Nope. My sister is, though. She was the only one for a while. Got a really big head about it but we eventually deflated it back down to about regular size. She's still a little top heavy, but manages to get through most days without toppling over."

"You don't get along?"

She shrugged. "We do. Just sister stuff, I guess. Plus, her being a superhero does give her a superhero complex and makes her think she, like, knows all about what's best for humanity. She was actually right a couple times."

"Huh. I never had a sister. Just a self-righteous baby sitter who made promises she never kept."

"That's kind of like having one."

"Well, there you go."

"Yeah."

We both leaned against the counter, letting the lull in conversation overtake the room as it pulsated with "awkward!"

I scrambled for a continuance in conversation. "So… if you're not a slayer, then what do you do?"

"Oh! I watch!"

"You… watch slayers?" From what Andrew told me, slayers were all girls. Athletic, super powered girls. So watching them would not be the worst gig of all time.

"Yes. Well, not, like, in a pervy way."

Damn. "No… oh, of course not. That would be… weird."

"I'm a Watcher. Capital W. We're trained to train the slayers. Research, demon lore, languages, stuff like that."

Okay, remember the thing about hot plus witty being something else, entirely? Add brains to that and you're going to find Charlotte Johannsen in a dopey incoherent daze on the floor.

"So, you… read a lot, then?" Good one, Char. Next ask if she drinks water and eats food regularly, too.

Dawn nodded. "Plus weapons, fighting skills, strategies. I'm like a one stop shop." Not the mental image I needed right then. "I'm your one stop shop, actually."

Definitely NOT the image I needed if I was going to stay upright and able to concentrate. "I'm sorry, what?"

"I'm your watcher."

"You're here to… watch me?"

"Yuh-huh."

"But not in a pervy way."

A car horn blared from the parking lot. "That's Andrew." She jotted down a phone number on the motel notepad. "I'll be back tomorrow. Be sure to get some sleep."

There wasn't time to question it or refuse or blink.

"O-okay."

She disappeared out the door. After a moment, she was back. "And it's only pervy if they don't know you."

There was a smirk, a flash of shiny hair, and the sound of the door latching shut.

Tomorrow couldn't come soon enough.


	2. Chapter 2

Nightmares weren't a new thing.

When I was really young, mom would come in and calm me down, telling me there were no such thing as monsters. Sometimes, Stacey would be over, babysitting on one of the late nights where I actually went to bed when she was still there. She told me to fight back if things were after me. Sometimes it worked. Other times, though, the dream played out more like I was just watching someone else's life. That happened a lot, actually.

And then, with the joys of adolescence, came the other dreams. The sweaty, panting, bodies connecting kind. It was like Pay Per View in my head. And we're talking multiple channels. A blonde and a big broody faced guy. That same blonde and a college frat boy. Again, the blonde and Billy Idol impersonator. Occasionally, it'd be the blonde with this pretty hot brunette chick. The blonde seemed to get around. Only, she was me, which was weird. Except in the case of the brunette. Then it was just hot.

But we were talking about nightmares. The kind featuring creatures with fangs or talons or both, chasing me around town. I'd fight, just like Stacey said I should. It was scary, but even with the biggest of the baddies, there was a sense that I could take them on. I'd fight and pummel and kick ass. It felt good. But there was one particular scenario I had a hard time handling.

It's dark, as usual. I'm running down an alley. This time I'm just with the blonde, not in her shoes. This probably means I'm that dark haired hottie, but that's another dream for another night. We're slamming bad guys against walls and turning them to dust. Suddenly, this guy appears out of nowhere, so he must be a monster, right? I stab him. He bleeds. I'm fucked because I just killed a guy. An actual guy.

There was pounding on the door. I knew it must be the cops, come to take me away to jail.

I blinked, rubbed my eyes, and let the room come into focus. The door was still being beaten down by the law. Or maybe it was maid service.

"Hold your fuckin' pants on." I actually didn't bother with pants of any kind, because if it is the fuzz, they can deal with my boycut lacy underthings and Clash t-shirt. As for housekeeping, it's nothing they hadn't seen before.

The second the door creaked open, I labeled myself as an idiot. Because that's who stands in front of hotties in their pajamas.

"Hi." Dawn leaned in the doorway, casual as all hell. The heels and skirt ensemble had been replaced by track pants and Adidas. A huge duffel bag sat next to her feet. "You got some sleep. That's good."

"I, um. Yeah." Sleep. Dammit. That meant my hair was a mess, my breath was awful, and, let's not forget, I wasn't wearing any pants. I nodded toward the bag. "You moving in?"

Her long ponytail swished when she moved. "Kinda." She dragged the bag behind her as she entered the room.

"Looks heavy."

There was a zip, a clank and a shing. "I manage." In her hand was a sword. An honest to goodness pointy tipped hunk of metal.

"I don't doubt it."

-

Lacrosse, field hockey, volleyball, soccer… these were all sports I enjoyed in high school. Not because I played them, but because I liked to watch.

I was never terribly athletic. Freakishly strong for someone who tops out at 5'5'' and can't seem to gain anything past 127 pounds, sure. But sports? Forget it.

As a kid, I'd always opted out because I was either too shy or too interested in whatever advanced level book I was reading. It wasn't until I got to Westlake that I realized the glory of girls in various combos of the shorts/shin guards/knee pads/sleeveless jersey ensemble. I did, however, limit myself to the stands and, outside of mandatory P.E. classes, never worked on developing any team skills or an ability to throw or kick any object into any kind of netted receptacle.

So, when Dawn handed me my very own large weighty broadsword, I told her she was crazy.

"Is it too heavy?"

I awkwardly waved the sword around, trying not to break any of the very fine (i.e.: crap) lighting fixtures in my motel room. "No, I just don't know… how to work it."

"You're workin' it just fine."

"Are you sure this is a good indoor activity?"

"They seem to frown on sword fights so close to the boardwalk."

"If this were Vegas, we could just hang out in front of the Excalibur. Maybe make some tips."

She ducked away from my flailing sword. "Try to keep the tip out of my face."

"I don't really know what I'm doing. Isn't that kind of why you're here?"

She was behind me now, arms around me, hands wrapping themselves over mine, demonstrating grip. "Yeah. I know. You're just… well, you're my first."

"Your… first?" If I was supposed to be learning, I wasn't retaining anything.

"First slayer."

"You've, um, never done this before?"

"Oh, I've done it tons of times! There were just other people around. It's my first solo gig." With gentle movements, she guided the weapon in my hands, to basic defensive positions.

"Right."

"But then, it's still not solo solo, because Andrew's always tagging along, making a mess and interrupting my game."

"Game killer, huh?"

"Did I say game? I meant training."

"Hey, guys? I got doughnuts!" Andrew's voice was muffled through the motel room door.

Dawn sighed and let go of my arms. "I meant game."


End file.
